Despite a high, thin broken cloud layer, it's 23°C with a light breeze and comfortable humidity at Inner Drive Technology World HQ. Cassie and I had a half-hour walk at a nice pace (we covered just over 3 km), and I've just finished my turkey sandwich. And yet, there's something else that has me feeling OK, if only for a little while...
Perhaps it's this? Maybe this? How about this? Or maybe it's Alexandra Petri?
In other news:
Finally, another solar storm, another cloudy night in Chicago: the Aurora Borealis may be visible as far south as Chicago overnight, just not in Chicago. As long as I can get Cassie on her daily long walk before the rain hits...
Oh, so many things:
Finally, after it took the Ogilvie Transportation Center Starbucks over 30 minutes to make my iced tea this morning (and I ordered it from 15 minutes away on my inbound train), it turns out the Starbucks staffing algorithm might be to blame. This is why I only get that one drink from Starbucks: it's really hard to screw up and usually takes them half a minute. Fortunately, I got my morning coffee at the cute local bagel shop on my walk to Cassie's day camp (and they gave Cassie a dog treat to boot), so I wasn't feeling homicidal.
I just popped out for lunch. It's 17°C in the Loop with lots of sun, the kind of day when I wonder why I went back to the office. Summer begins Saturday. Ah, to be French and take an entire month off...
This time of year has other features, many of which popped up in my various RSS feeds this morning:
And finally, Block Club Chicago sent a reporter to the Duke of Perth yesterday to surveille the packing. Other than giving GM Mike Miller a completely new last name, he generally got the story right, and even included some photos guaranteed to make anyone who loved the place hold back a tear.
Now that Cassie's poop no longer has Giardia cysts in it, she went back to day camp today, so that I could go to my downtown office for the first time in nearly two weeks. To celebrate, it looks like I'll get to walk home from her day care in a thunderstorm.
Before that happens, though:
Finally, the MLB's least-popular umpire, Ángel Hernández, has announced his retirement, to much rejoicing. The Post has a retrospective on his worst calls over the years.
I took Cassie out at 11am instead of her usual 12:30pm because of this:
The storm front passed quickly, but it hit right at 12:30 and continued for half an hour with some intensity. It'll keep raining on and off all day, too.
Other things rained down in the past day or so:
Finally, Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock has died at age 53 of cancer. No word whether the production of the 2004 documentary contributed to his early demise.
I usually spend the first day or two of a sprint researching and testing out approaches before I start the real coding effort. Since one of my stories this sprint requires me to refactor a fairly important feature—an effort I think will take me all of next week—I decided to read up on something today and have wound up in a rabbit hole.
Naturally, that means a few interesting stories have piled up:
- The Presidential Greatness Project released its annual list of, well, presidents, putting Lincoln at the top (95.03 points), Buchanan next-to-last (16.71), and the XPOTUS dead last (10.92).
- The Justice Dept has finally filed an antitrust suit against Live Nation Entertainment, owner of Ticketmaster, for running one of the most pernicious monopolies of the 21st century. (I refuse to go to Live Nation events or use Ticketmaster anymore, because who wants to pay a 35% fee to a third party just to buy a ticket?)
- Molly White worries about a Dutch court's rationale for convicting Alexey Pertsev of writing the code for a service used to launder money, pointing out that privacy is a human right, and not all anonymization is criminal.
- Pilot James Fallows explains the Singapore Airlines severe-turbulence encounter and repeats the warning I gave earlier in the week.
Finally, Lagunitas Brewing will move its brewing operations back to Petaluma, Calif., (which is a million times better than Megaluma!) and close its Chicago taproom this summer, so I suppose the Brews & Choos Project should get its ass over there pronto.
Cassie only got a 25-minute lunchtime walk today because of this:
The forecast calls for bands of thunderstorms pretty much through tomorrow, so we're going to dance between raindrops a lot.
Also, she has only one more dose of de-wormer tonight. Then on Wednesday I can take a sample to the vet, hoping to get her cleared for day care in time for Tuesday. Fingers crossed.
Cassie and I just got back from her vet, with a good 2 km walk in each direction and treats at both ends. The semi-annual wellness check was only $88, and pronounced Cassie in perfect health. Even her weight (25 kg) is exactly what it should be, so I can start adding a little kibble to her meals if we walk a lot.
Of course, the heartworm pills were $230 and the fecal test was $107, so not everything about the checkup was great. Le sigh.
Also, it's warm today: 27°C for both walks, which is more like June 14th than May 13th (normal high: 20.9°C). I even had the air on last night. But I can see a cold front approaching from the west, with an expected temperature crash around 6pm and temperatures barely above 10°C (March 24th!) tomorrow. I'm glad we got our walks in already—looks like the first thunderstorm could hit before 3pm.
And check back tomorrow and Wednesday for two more Brews & Choos reviews from this past weekend, including a brand-new brewery that just opened 2 km from my front door.
NOAA has predicted a severe geomagnetic storm watch for tonight:
NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) — a division of the National Weather Service — is monitoring the sun following a series of solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that began on May 8. Space weather forecasters have issued a Severe (G4) Geomagnetic Storm Watch for the evening of Friday, May 10. Additional solar eruptions could cause geomagnetic storm conditions to persist through the weekend.
A large sunspot cluster has produced several moderate to strong solar flares since Wednesday at 5:00 am ET. At least five flares were associated with CMEs that appear to be Earth-directed. SWPC forecasters will monitor NOAA and NASA’s space assets for the onset of a geomagnetic storm.
CMEs are explosions of plasma and magnetic fields from the sun’s corona. They cause geomagnetic storms when they are directed at Earth. Geomagnetic storms can impact infrastructure in near-Earth orbit and on Earth’s surface, potentially disrupting communications, the electric power grid, navigation, radio and satellite operations. SWPC has notified the operators of these systems so they can take protective action. Geomagnetic storms can also trigger spectacular displays of aurora on Earth. A severe geomagnetic storm includes the potential for aurora to be seen as far south as Alabama and Northern California.
The local media picked it up as well, but noted that the sky will probably look like this over Chicago when the storm reaches maximum:
That's the sky this afternoon, anyway. It might even rain tonight. I'll at least be able to read about it tomorrow.
Today's second round of severe thunderstorms has arrived:
The National Weather Service issued a tornado watch for parts of eastern and central Illinois until 8 p.m. Tuesday as severe storms redeveloped in the afternoon and were expected to continue through the early evening.
Severe weather hazards include damaging hail as big as tennis balls and gusty winds up to 70 mph as the storms move west to east, according to meteorologists.
Tennis balls? Ouch. That sounds way worse than tennis elbow.
Looks like it'll pass through the area quiclky, though:
I got lucky walking Cassie and getting to the El this morning. I hope I get lucky on the reverse trip this evening. (I actually remembered to bring an umbrella today, though!)